“I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect.”

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

Whoever lives among many evils just as I, how can dying not be a source of gain?

I recommend bread, meat, vegetables, and beer.

The oaths of a woman I inscribe on water.

A mind at peace does not engender wars.

It is a base thing for a man among the people not to obey those in command. Never in a state can the laws be well administered when fear does not stand firm.

Nobody likes the bringer of bad news.

Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.

Time, which sees all things, has found you out.

Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all.

There is a point beyond which even justice becomes unjust.

Laziness is the mother of all evils.

You don’t know what kind of day you will have, until evening.

Knowledge must come through action.

Each one of us must live the life God gives him; it cannot be shirked.

In season, all is good.

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.

All the powers of soul and body, memory, understanding, and will, interior and exterior senses, the desires of spirit and of sense, all workin and by love.

Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

Desire sets our compass, but real life steers our course.

We can do nothing ourselves; God must do it. To speak to Him thus is easier by nature for woman than for man because a natural desire lives in her to give herself completely to someone.

If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.

How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers.

Forbid us something, and that thing we desire.